


Silent and Sound

by affectivefallacy



Category: Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 04:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4420763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/affectivefallacy/pseuds/affectivefallacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyo was completely silent for the first few days. He would not say a word. And he wasn't sure if it was because he was afraid or he was stubborn. Maybe he just forgot how to speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent and Sound

Kyo was completely silent for the first few days. He would not say a word. And he wasn't sure if it was because he was afraid or he was stubborn. Maybe he just forgot how to speak. His voice had gone hoarse, and dripped out of him, in the tears he'd cried at that final moment.  
  
Everything happened quickly, and was complicated, and Kyo didn't fully understand. He didn't know what they were saying but he could understand their tones - the anger, the tenseness, the bitterness in their voices - that he had heard his whole life. And he didn't know this man or anything about him or why he had come up to him and asked him if he'd like to come and live with him … but he could tell one thing. His voice was different.  
  
He didn't recognize the quality, but while furiously wiping away the tears and overhearing the exchanges between his father and the maids and this strange new man, the question of whether or not he'd like to come and live with him rang in his ears. He felt a clawing desperation, a grip like water was pouring down his throat and filling his lungs, and if he could just go with this man, then maybe he could surface and gasp a breath of air, for even just a moment. For just the first time.  
  
He didn't understand all the logistics of the exchange and he was more than relieved to go home with even a stranger that evening after the funeral. But he did know that it felt like his father had handed him over all too easily.  
  
At first the maids wouldn't let him go with Kazuma Sohma right away, but they wouldn't touch him either. They stood around him in the house, glancing at him with disapproving eyes, while the man refused to leave. Finally they gave up and told the man to just take him. He could take him, cause no one else wanted him.  
  
"You'll be compensated, of course," one of them said, as the man gestured Kyo to follow him and picked up his small jacket. The man smiled, the first and only time Kyo heard that disgusted tone of voice in this man that was so often directed at him, "I'm sure." And then they were out the door.  
  
Kyo didn't want to but he couldn't help himself but fall asleep as soon as they arrived at the house.  
  
They went for a walk the next day, towards Kazuma's dojo. Kyo glanced around himself, cautiously, realizing that he was outside the Sohma main estate walls. The houses lining the street were still designated with Sohma nameplates and the trees were still lined straight and foreboding down the road, but the air felt more open.  
  
The man was speaking to him and Kyo looked up with curiosity and suspicion. "I run a dojo, teaching martial arts. If you're interested, you could come and learn, too."  
  
Who was this man? Why was he doing this? Kyo's heart was too young to form words like pity and obligation but he suspected it in feeling nonetheless.  
  
That was when he heard the whispering. Women watching them from the other side of the road, staring and chatting among themselves. Kyo did not understand their words but he could hear it in their tone. The tone was always there. All the negative emotions, discernible not in words but in a stifling feeling left in the air after they were spoken. It was worse by far than if he had understood.  
  
He stopped, the anger furrowing his small brow.  
  
Then -  
  
He felt strong, adult arms tightening around his body and suddenly he was off the ground. It started to fall away below him, his feet dangling, the air drifting up his shirt, the women sinking below his line of sight and his nose level with the smell of the cherry blossoms.  
  
He startled, as the words floated up to his ears instead of down, "From now on, you will breathe the air of higher places."  
  
He sucked in the crisp Spring sky, realizing he'd been holding his breath in shock. He could not remember a time that he had ever been picked up off the ground. That he had ever been touched, by more than his mother's sweating hand on his bracelet's arm or Kagura's small chubby fingers gripping his own. That he had ever been _enveloped_.  
  
He felt the man's strong arms around him as Kyo wrapped his own arms around the man's head. He felt high, he felt outside of the world, he felt a little nervous … but he felt safely held.


End file.
